#thomas lord

5 incidents tagged

Thomas Lord Sells the Ground — William Ward Saves Lord's, July 1825

n/a

1825-07-28

In 1825 Thomas Lord, the founder of the ground that bears his name, decided that property development would pay him better than cricket and obtained planning permission to build housing across most of the playing field. The MCC member William Ward MP, a Bank of England director and noted batsman, bought him out for £5,000 to save the ground. Weeks later, on the night of 28 July 1825, the pavilion burned to the ground after a Winchester v Harrow match, destroying the club's records.

#thomas-lord#william-ward#lord-s

⭐Serious

William Ward Saves Lord's — The £5,000 Cheque That Kept Cricket at St John's Wood, 1825

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1825-05-15

When Thomas Lord obtained planning permission in 1825 to redevelop most of his cricket ground for housing, the MCC member William Ward — a Bank of England director and the man who had scored 278 at the same ground five years earlier — wrote a personal cheque for £5,000 to buy out Lord's interest. The transaction preserved Lord's as a cricket ground and is the single most consequential financial act in nineteenth-century cricket.

#william-ward#thomas-lord#1825

⭐Serious

Lord's Moves to St John's Wood — Thomas Lord's Third Ground, May 1814

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1814-05-07

In the spring of 1814 the Yorkshireman Thomas Lord, evicted from his Middle Ground in Marylebone by the route of the Regent's Canal, dug up his sacred turf for the second time in three years and laid it down on a former duck pond on Colonel Henry Eyre's estate at St John's Wood. The new ground — Lord's third — opened in May 1814. It has stood on the same site for more than two hundred years and is now the senior cricket ground in the world.

#lord-s#thomas-lord#st-johns-wood

⭐Mild

First Match at the Modern Lord's — MCC v Hertfordshire, 22 June 1814

Marylebone Cricket Club vs Hertfordshire

1814-06-22

On Wednesday 22 June 1814, three weeks after the new ground had opened to club practice, Marylebone Cricket Club played Hertfordshire in the first formal match on the third Lord's ground at St John's Wood. MCC won by an innings and 27 runs. The fixture, intended as a low-key inaugural rather than a great public occasion, has since become the recognised birth-date of the modern Lord's and a landmark in the history of the sport.

#mcc#hertfordshire#lord-s

⭐Mild

Thomas Lord Opens His Middle Ground — St John's Wood, May 1809

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1809-05-08

In May 1809 Thomas Lord, frustrated by his landlord Mr Portman's plan to raise the rent on his original Dorset Fields ground, opened a second ground at the North Bank in St John's Wood. The Middle Ground, leased from the Eyre family for eighty years, hosted St John's Wood Cricket Club through 1809-13 but was barely used by the MCC, who continued to play at the Old Ground until the 1810 lease expiry. Requisitioned in 1813 for the cutting of the Regent's Canal, the Middle Ground was abandoned and Lord moved his turf to a third site — the present Lord's — in 1814.

#thomas-lord#middle-ground#st-johns-wood